The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle
Page 118
Right. Gotta dye my hair and take some pictures first, but then we can take off for the Scottish Highlands.
I watched Oberon’s gait carefully as we exited the vet’s office. You look like you’re doing okay, no limping. How does that shoulder feel?
Good, I’ll make you some more. Need you to feel perfect again so we can go hunting.
We ran errands in Flagstaff—getting more herbs for Oberon’s tea and some for myself, plus a particularly inky hair dye that would completely ruin me for a while. Dyeing my own hair didn’t scare me as much as saying good-bye to Granuaile’s: The sun wouldn’t shine on it the same way anymore, and she’d probably remind me uncomfortably of the Morrigan. But then I thought it might be a good thing for us to be unattractive to each other for a while, and this alteration of our appearance would be a blessing. Coyote had probably done me more favors than he actually intended. I knew he’d gotten us a place to live so I could keep the coal mine closed and his gold mine open, not out of any sense of guilt for tricking me or any other sense of obligation.
Granuaile didn’t like the dye job at all. We got a hotel suite so we could do it properly. She looked terminally depressed when she emerged from the bathroom with raven hair and, as a result, rather Goth by accident. She didn’t want to get her picture taken.
“Aughh!” she said miserably, looking in the vanity mirror in the truck of the cab and fingering a wavy curl near her temple. “This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before. You know what we look like? A couple of emo douche bags.”
“Well, look at the bright side, Granuaile. Emo Douche Bags would be a great band name.”
We spent some time at one of those office/print stores where you can use the Internet and fax and so on, sending our new likenesses to Hal at Magnusson and Hauk and asking him to work us up some new IDs.
“You hardly had time to get used to the ones I just gave you!” he grumbled on the phone. “I can’t get these overnight, you know. It’s going to take a few days.”
“Understood. We’re going to get out of the country for a while and then come back to get ourselves settled in these new names. They should last us a good decade or so while I’m training Granuaile.”
“I’m looking at these forms right now. You’re going to let people call you Sterling Silver?”
“I didn’t pick the names, I swear. It was Coyote.”
“Before you go,” Hal said, “thought you might like to know that Leif has severed all ties with our firm.”
“He’s left the state?”
“No, just our law firm. He’s still very much in the state. He’s back in charge too, from what I can tell. There may be a few stragglers here and there in the corners, but no one is going to give him any trouble after the coup he pulled. Antoine and the boys are well fed right now,” he said, referring to the local ghouls. “And I delivered your message. He knows he’s supposed to stay out of your way. He asked me to express his deepest regrets. Believe that if you want.”
I thanked Hal, assuring him I’d be back in touch in a week or so, and rang off. In a way it was soothing to have Leif back in charge; like a despised dictator, he was easy to hate, but at least he provided stability. Much as I wished to hunt him down for what he did to Oberon and me, letting him live (or continue in undeath, whatever) would keep Arizona a slightly safer place to train Granuaile. And I had already seen what happened to people when they pursued vengeance above all else. Besides, no matter how I tried to rationalize Leif’s actions as self-serving, there was the undeniable fact that he had saved me from bleeding out and gotten me to a hospital. Had he wanted me dead, all he had to do was nothing at all. Saving me had to count for something, even if he was the one to imperil me in the first place. Still, I planned on creating a new charm for my necklace as soon as I could set up a new shop in which to work metals. My experience with Zdenik proved that a mental command for unbinding a vampire would be extremely useful.
Silversmithing, I decided, would be my next cover job—it would fit my assumed name if nothing else. I’d do some farming too and maybe get some sheep or goats for Oberon to tend. Now that I was free of all obligations and everyone who wanted me dead thought I already was, I could consider such things.
We drove Coyote’s truck up to Hart Prairie, a beautiful place on the west side of the San Francisco Peaks largely watched over by the Nature Conservancy. There was a tether to Tír na nÓg there, and it was there that Granuaile experienced her first shift to another plane.
We spent very little time in Tír na nÓg—I shifted us to Scotland right away, before any faeries could spot us and report that the Iron Druid bloke wasn’t dead after all.
Those few days were probably the best time I’ve ever had in Scotland. Oberon was able to run confidently after another three days of healing—he called it “Intensive Sausage Therapy.” And I got back the use of my hand after three days of healing as well; the Highlands elemental was only too happy to help me out with that. The tattoo was indeed ruined on the back of my hand, however, and I wasn’t looking forward to having the Morrigan touch it up.
Once we were fully functional, Oberon and I shifted to the southern hemisphere, where it was summer, while Granuaile stayed behind to tour castles and politely deflect the come-ons of randy Scottish lads. Or maybe she didn’t deflect them; I don’t know, it’s her business anyway, and she deserves whatever happiness she can find.
There was plenty of time for me to think as I stalked Australia with Oberon on a sunny day in Queensland. Though I usually try to live in the present and avoid dwelling on the past, I found time there to gnaw on some regrets. I wished I hadn’t been tricked into killing Zdenik and the two skinwalkers; I mourned the deaths of Darren Yazzie and Frank Chischilly, and it was a shame that Hel had escaped—especially since she took the widow’s body with her. I was worried about what Hel was up to more than anything else at this point, but as there was very little I could do about it until Granuaile was trained, I decided I would not let the daughter of Loki steal away the few moments of sunshine afforded to me now. Ganesha’s mysterious League of Jungle Gods seemed to want me to lay low anyway. The omniscient deities all knew I was still around, of course, but Jesus and that lot weren’t the types to share information with the pantheons who’d like to cast my ashes into the sea. That meant nobody was looking for me, and for the first time in millennia I could ease back on my paranoia and relax.
Oberon and I found a field of red clover and we flopped down onto our backs for an epic wriggling session. Wriggling around in clover is one of the finest perks of walking the world as a hound. It’s not the same when you do it as a human.
Oberon sneezed and then we rested, legs in the air, enjoying the sun on our bellies.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to run when you no longer have to do it.
For Alan O’Bryan,
who bravely stands in front of my word vomit
and tells me to clean it up.
He is an outstanding alpha reader
and the finest of friends.
This is not a trick.
Acknowledgments
Since the first three books came out blam-blam-blam, I never really got a chance to say thanks to the readers. So I want to thank you, first, for your support of the series, and for buying books, period. Authors don’t get to keep writing unless readers buy ’em, and this book wouldn’t have been possible without you buying Hounded way back when and telling your friends to go buy it too. Many of you have said howdy to me on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and on my blog, and I appreciate you taking the trouble! You’re all very kind.
My family is incredibly supportive and pretends not to notice when I walk around talking to my imaginary friends; thank you for the love.
Tricia Pasternak is my editor at Del Rey, and I think she’s five kinds of brilliant. We agree on things like the greatest Metallica song ever recorded and the potential for mayhem inherent in a bag of marshmallows. She is my shepherd through the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt, and I am so grateful for her encouragement, guidance, and the unseen work she does to make each book the best it can be.
Thanks also to the scads o’ fabulous people at Del Rey who contribute to the series’ success: Mike Braff, Nancy Delia, David Moench, Joe Scalora, Scott Shannon, April Flores, and Gina Wachtel, among many others.
Evan Goldfried, my agent at JGLM, deserves bounteous thanks for all his advice and help.
Thanks to Detective Dana Packer in Rhode Island for tips on how to fake a death scene. Anything that sounds stupid or implausible is entirely my fault, and if you try to fake a death in her jurisdiction she will find you.
Sincere gratitude to Tammy Gwara for uncomfortable conversations about poison chemistry. She will probably never come over for dinner at my house now.
Mihir Wanchoo is a font of Indian stories, so thanks to him for the heads-up on the very interesting history of Indra.
To the Confederacy of Nerds—Tooth, Martin, Andrew, Alan, and John—thanks for the laughs and the Insanity Points.
As in my other books, I do try to set these fictional events in the real world as much as possible. However, this particular story inserts two more drugstores into Kayenta than it currently has; the town’s pharmaceutical needs are handled by the Tribal Health Office. While the Double Dog Dare Gourmet Café in Flagstaff is entirely fictional, you can visit the Winter Sun Trading Company, Macy’s European coffeehouse, and Granny’s Closet “for reals.” They’re all spiffy places, and writing about them took me back to my happy college days at NAU.
The Navajo creation story, the Diné Bahane’, is a constantly changing and evolving work meant to be performed orally by a singer and tailored to the audience and purpose for the ceremony. The written versions, therefore, often differ significantly in the details—and my fiction, while based on a couple of well-documented accounts, should definitely not be viewed as an authoritative source on the subject, nor should the ceremonial procedures depicted herein be construed as genuine. In some versions of the story there are five worlds instead of four, but since four are taught at Diné College in the Navajo Nation, I went with that. My source for the two Coyotes, the spirits of First World, and more was the version Hastin Tlo’tsi Hee (Old Man Buffalo Grass) told to Aileen O’Bryan in 1928, originally published as Bulletin 163 of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in 1956, but now available under the title Navaho Indian Myths; I also consulted the work of Paul G. Zolbrod, Diné Bahane’, published in 1987 by the University of New Mexico Press.
I’m indebted to Karen, Mervyn, and Leah Harvey for helping me out with the pronunciation of words in Diné bazaad, the Navajo language, which you see at the front of the book. Any errors are of course mine and not theirs.
Two Ravens and One Crow is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey eBook Original
Copyright © 2012 by Kevin Hearne
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY and the Del Rey colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53543-6
Cover design: Gene Mollica
www.delreybooks.com
v3.1_r1
Contents
Master Table of Contents
Two Ravens and One Crow
Title Page
Copyright
First Page
What would it be like, I wonder, if humans could slobber as freely as dogs? There’s no social stigma for dogs when they slobber and it looks like a lot of fun, so I envy them that freedom. I’ve certainly wanted to slobber at various times—there are situations where nothing else makes sense—but despite having lived for 2,100 years and in many countries around the world, I have yet to find a culture where it’s even mildly acceptable, much less looked upon with approval.
I guess some things will never change.
Despite the universe’s refusal to change enduring truths according to my will, lately I’ve been wishing I could train a Druid in a five-minute karate-movie montage rather than the necessary twelve years. After ten seconds of futile effort trying to solve a problem, the initiate would abruptly improve or learn the lesson and her expression would fill with wonder, and I would award said initiate a cookie or a tight nod of approval. The initiate would bask in the glory of an achievement and then move on to the next difficult challenge for another ten seconds, and so on, until a triumphant swell of music and a slow-motion high-five signaled victory and completion. We would smile the radiant smiles of actors in fast-food commercials, merrily chuckling as we ate enough grease to make our hearts explode like meat grenades.
But training my apprentice, Granuaile, wasn’t like that at all. Shaping her mind for Druidry was rough and monotonous for both of us, yet shaping her body was fraught with peril. The peril was the sort Sir Galahad had faced at Castle Anthrax: stupefying sexual tension.
Every winter solstice, I gave my apprentice an entire wardrobe of loose, shapeless sweats, and she kept buying herself tight, form-fitting outfits to wear in the summer months. I had trained my Irish wolfhound, Oberon, to help me through it and be my Lancelot whenever Granuaile made my jaw drop, which was more often than I would care to admit. She’d go through her kicks and lunges and various stances and build up a sweat, then I’d start thinking about other ways to get sweaty, and shortly thereafter I’d need to be rescued.
Can’t I have just a little bit of peril? I would ask Oberon through our mental link.
Granuaile picked up on the pattern after a while, unfortunately.
“Sensei?” she asked.
>
“Yes?”
“Why are you always leaving about halfway through a workout to give Oberon a snack?”
“What? Well, he’s a good dog.”
“Granted, but he’s a good dog all the time, and the only times you interrupt what you’re doing to give him a snack are during workouts.”
“I reward him sometimes for using big words. And sometimes I reward him for shutting up.”
Now would be a good time to shut up.
Deal.
“So what did he say just now?” Granuaile asked.
“I’m sorry, but that’s classified information.”
Oberon chuffed, and Granuaile’s eyes narrowed. She knew the dog was laughing, blast him, and now she’d be determined to find out what he thought was so funny.
I was saved by the arrival of an extremely large crow. It spat out “Caw!” at Klaxon-level volume, landing on top of our trailer. It startled us all, including Oberon, who barked at it a couple of times. The bird’s eyes glowed red and he stopped, tucking his head down and retracting his tail between his legs.
“Morrigan?” I said.
The red glow faded from the crow’s eyes as she tilted her head and spoke in a throaty rasp, “Surprise, Siodhachan.” The Celtic Chooser of the Slain would never call me Atticus. The head bobbed once at my apprentice. “Granuaile.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, because the Morrigan did not make social calls. I belatedly realized that I should have offered her refreshment or adhered to some standard of hospitality, but thankfully the Morrigan was too focused on her mission to notice my awful manners.